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The Apollo 16 landing site is in the region around Descartes crater in the lunar highlands.

The landing spot was chosen to allow the astronauts to gather geologically older lunar material than the samples obtained in the first four landings, which were in or near lunar maria (Descartes and Cayley Formations).

The mission lasted 11.1 days, with a stay on the lunar surface of 71 hours. The crew were on the lunar surface for 20.2 hours during which they traversed approximately 27 kilometers and collected approximately 96 kilograms of samples.

60659 is a small rake sample from the area near the Lunar Module. Our thin section shows two distinct lithologies dominated by cataclastic anorthosite. Rotation 1 shows that shocked plagioclase feldspar is abundant in both lithologies, whereas rotation 2 shows distorted lamellar twinning in one plagioclase crystal within the anorthosite.

The sample weighed 22.2 grams before analysis and has been dated at 3.9±0.1 billion years (Ar/Ar).